3 weeks ago
EXCLUSIVE: Wise Child Studios has appointed Kelsey Jackson arsenic Head of Scripted, arsenic it looks to standard up its communicative movie and tv business.
Jackson joins aft astir 4 years arsenic VP Narrative TV astatine Archer Gray, wherever she helped build retired nan tv division. In her caller role, she will oversee Wise Child’s scripted slate and thief lead its strategy crossed development, packaging, financing, and production, moving pinch laminitis and CEO Jason Beekman to grow nan company’s footprint.
“Kelsey has precisely nan benignant of taste, drive, and creator-first instincts we want defining nan adjacent section of Wise Child,” Beekman said. “As our scripted business grows alongside our documentary and unscripted work, Kelsey is nan correct imaginative leader to thief america standard without losing nan hands-on, collaborative attack that makes Wise Child different.”
Jackson’s inheritance spans some tv and features, pinch acquisition connected acclaimed bid including American Horror Story and American Crime Story, arsenic good arsenic Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Sundance-winning Me and Earl and nan Dying Girl. She astir precocious served arsenic a co-producer connected Netflix’s hit To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before franchise.
News of Jackson’s hiring comes pursuing nan unveiling of Wise Child’s docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model to No. 1 connected Netflix successful February.
“What excites maine astir Wise Child is that nan company’s documentary instauration gives its scripted activity a existent constituent of view,” Jackson told us. “Jason has built a slate rooted successful existent stories and analyzable characters—and that inheritance creates a unsocial lane for scripted projects that consciousness grounded, resonant, and alive. So overmuch of what Wise Child is processing successful documentary has a earthy imaginative speech pinch nan scripted side, and that parallel attack is incredibly exciting.”
We announced nan motorboat of Wise Child, a accumulation institution headed up by seasoned intermezo lawyer and business strategist Beekman and erstwhile Imagine Documentaries showrunner Ryan Miller, successful 2023. Jackson joins arsenic nan institution gains momentum connected nan communicative broadside pinch projects including On nan End, a play starring Tim Blake Nelson that’s based connected nan existent communicative of a down-on-his-luck Montauk mechanic. Written and directed by Ari Selinger, nan movie screened astatine TIFF Industry Selects and premiered astatine nan Hamptons Film Festival earlier riding nan show circuit, winning nan Audience Award astatine Sarasota and Best Film and Best Actress for Mireille Enos astatine nan Rome Film Festival.
Upcoming, Wise Child is group to produce Pickups, a characteristic drama from Toronto filmmaker and character Andy Reid, alongside producers Lucy McNulty and Alison Almeida. Expanding connected Reid’s short film Testing, nan movie follows a lonely cheery man chasing validation who takes a occupation arsenic a pat creation coach and develops a fixation connected nan begetter of his favourite student.
Their slate besides includes The Paper Man, based connected nan Black List book by Sean O’Keefe. Set against nan emergence of fascism successful 1930s Europe, nan humanities sports play tells nan existent communicative of Matthias “The Paper Man” Sindelar, Austria’s top footballer, whose grace, intellect, and quiet rebellion made him some a nationalist leader and a target of nan Nazi regime.
Wise Child is represented by CAA.
